Issue when registering 32bit COM from outside the system(SysWOW64) directory

Question

I'm having an issue in accomplishing the registered state of a 32bit component or library (say OCX or dll), for the purpose of compiling the project directly dependent upon it.

Standard procedure for achieving it is via regsvr32.exe within SysWOW64 folder pointing to the parameter of component/library destination, e.g. C:\Windows\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe someComponent.ocx .

However, after messing with the registry and reinstalling the component the only way I got it working was by copying that .ocx and its dependency files into SysWOW64.

Only then, after using regsvr32(all within the same SysWOW64 folder) Visual Studio compiler managed successfully compiling it, sort of like it was blind to the fact that I've already done that - proven in turn by the fact of the presence of the key within the Windows registry.

Has anyone experienced something like this and why would it register only via "direct" presence of the component within the SysWOW64 system folder as opposed to the "distant" in some other, non-system folder??

Thanks

Answer 1

So none of these were right, but I'm going to leave this answer because OP confirmed that none them are right, which narrows the problem.

There are several ways this can go wrong. All of these cases do not work:

• Registering a 32 bit dll in C:\Program Files.
• Registering a 32 bit dll in C:\Windows\System32
• Registering a 32 bit dll while the current directory is in or under one of those.
• Not registering as admin. This does wild things in 32 bit code that can lead to confusing problems.